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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28527684">No More to Roam</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/emmacortana'>emmacortana (orphan_account)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Gallagher Girls Series - Ally Carter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aftermath of Torture, Canon Rewrite, Character Study, I don't actually like torture fics i swear, Implied/Referenced Torture, Semi-graphic descriptions of violence, Torture, honestly huge tw, i just gotta write some things down u kno, if ur queasy about that shit just like. this is not the fic for u, semi-graphic descriptions of torture</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:14:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,518</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28527684</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/emmacortana</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Cammie is going over the river to the small crumbling stone house by the mountain, where the remains of her father are buried.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Abigail Cameron &amp; Matthew Morgan, Cameron Morgan &amp; Matthew Morgan, Zachary Goode/Cameron Morgan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>No More to Roam</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>TRIGGER WARNING, PLEASE READ.</p><p>There is an overarching theme of torture within this fic, and some specific points where the descriptions do get pretty graphic. If you are sensitive to that kind of imagery or concept, PLEASE do not read this fic. Stay safe, y'all &lt;3.</p><p>This fic was a challenge for multiple reasons, but here are some things you should know before going into it.</p><p>1. The books are written in 1st person, which is a perspective I rarely ever use. I much prefer third. After playing around with both, I decided to stick with the unfamiliar 1st, so bear with me.</p><p>2. This was a series I read and loved when I was twelve. So, six years ago. And I've been reading a lot of children's, middle school, and the younger end of young adult books lately, because they're so much easier to get into, don't take long to read, and often can surprise you in how complex they are, (not to mention the nostalgia). One of the things i didn't really care for in this reread of the series is its tendencies to be rather juvenile at times, in both plot and writing. Which is honestly fine for the kind of book I think they're going for, which is light, funny, and something pretty kid friendly—but I still wanted more. That's why Out of Sight, Out of Time stood out for me so much: I felt they went through a more mature route of story-telling and the just slightly non-linear narrative what with the flashbacks and mystery made it so much more interesting. I just still couldn't help but think, what if they went all the way?</p><p>Such as the guns and the killing part, and what Cammie had to do while she was out on her own. That's something I still want to focus on. Or the torture Cammie faced. now, normally i'm not one for the "torture character just for the hell of it so another character can get shipped with them" kinda gal, but I think the part that was so interesting to me was how her father was there before. It feels like a repeat in history, and like his ghost is still lurking around somewhere in that cabin. A shadow of Matthew Morgan, pained and tortured, as he watches his little daughter now grown up and facing the world of troubles he subjected her too.</p><p>Therefore, this is my take on chapter 30 of OSOT, with a darker twist in it.</p><p>3. Not all of this writing is mine. First of all, the plot itself is near identical to the actual book. Cammie was captured by the Circle during the summer, and she was released with no memories to go back home. The crew goes to Rome to try and investigate what happened, which leads them to that small house in which Cammie was held and tortured. The writing itself as well was largely based on what was already written, so if you were to compare this fic to the original chapter, you would find it to be twice as long, with some parts that are almost completely identical, and parts that I really took some creative liberties with. I tried to blend my writing into Ally Carter's the best that I could.</p><p>4. I'm probably going to orphan this pretty soon bc this isn't a fandom i'm particularly into and also i'm not sure if this style of writing necessarrily fits me lmao</p><p>and 5. Just for your knowledge, the river Jordan is the river that had to be crossed in order to reach the promised land in Judaism and some forms of Christianity and Catholicism. Just so you know.</p><p>Without further ado, happy readings!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>My memory wasn’t back. It wasn’t as simple as that. But there were flashes—images and sounds. Intense, vivid, dizzying; I felt my head spinning like a compass, guiding us for hours until our ears popped and the snow blew, and I stared out our car window, looking for anything that seemed familiar.</p><p>No one spoke as the roads grew narrower, steeper. I didn’t know if it was the altitude or the situation, but I found it harder and harder to breathe until I said, “Turn here,” for reasons I didn’t quite know.</p><p>We drove on. The road turned to lane and then to nothing. Agent Townsend stopped the car. “It’s a dead end,” he said, and Abby turned to me.</p><p>“It looks different in the winter, Squirt. Don’t pressure yourself or—“</p><p>“We’re close,” I said, and before anyone could stop me, I reached for the door and was out, wading through the drifts.</p><p>The flashes were stronger then, clearer than they had been on the hillside with Dr. Steve. It wasn’t just the feeling of waking up in the convent, the memory of the chopper ride down the mountain. I knew that air. I breathed it in and felt sick.</p><p>Those rocks were the same rocks. The trees were the same trees. I waded out of the river, not checking to see they were following me, and stopped in the clearing of the woods.</p><p>“Are you sure?” Bex said from behind me. “Are you positive that this—“</p><p>I looked around, taking the sight in. The broken branches that I knew I had broken on purpose—I’d known someone would come looking for me eventually and I wanted to show them the way. I heard myself screaming, except I wasn’t screaming, not then. But I remembered the sound pierce through the air, and I knew that the ground, the trees, the air, they had all soaked in the sounds of my scream and bore the wounds of my presence.</p><p>I wandered sideways, digging my toes in the dirt to unearth a dirtied bullet, and knew that somewhere in the river was a bloated, purple body, a man who had been shot with his own gun.</p><p>I reached out gingerly for a piece of pine, my blood still on the bark.</p><p>“This is the place.”</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>It took an hour to reach it—the ruins of an old stone house that stood alone, crumbling at the top of the mountain.</p><p>“I was here,” I said.</p><p>The images in my mind were black-and-white and blurry, but I felt it in my bones. My dreams were coming back, but they weren’t dreams. And yet they weren’t quite memories either as I pushed through a creaking wooden door and walked through rooms I didn’t recognize, listened to sounds I didn’t know. Only the feel of the stones beneath my fingers was familiar.</p><p>There was a cold fireplace filled with black logs and forgotten ashes. It hadn’t burned in months, but I heard the crackle of the fire. I kneeled down in front of it and took the fireplace poker in my hands, lifting up my wet t-shirt that clung to my skin, and my fingers grazed a burn mark on my stomach that matched the poker exactly.</p><p>Two bowls sat on a table, cold to the touch, but I could taste the food.</p><p>I’d already broken free once, but there was something in that building that hadn’t let me go.</p><p>Townsend and Abby were wordless, efficient. Opening drawers, scanning floorboards. They covered every inch of the old stone house until they finally huddled together and spoke in low, conspiratorial whispers.</p><p>“Nothing,” Abby told him. “You?”</p><p>“This place is clean,” he said.</p><p>But I just turned to the small door that led to the narrow cellar stairs, and said, “Down there.”</p><p>Zach was at my back, following me into the musty cellar. It stunk of old blood. There was one tiny window high on the wall, barely peeking over the ground.</p><p>“Come on, Cammie,” he pleaded. “Don’t do this to yourself. The Circle never leaves anything behind.” But I knew that wasn’t true.</p><p>They left behind a narrow bed, with a set of handcuffs locked on the bedpost. I could feel the aches in my back, having to sleep contorted because my wrists were locked.</p><p>A single chair in the middle of the room, rope wrapped loosely around it. There was a pool of dried blood on the floor there, flaking off when I nudged it with my toes. I felt my arms and legs tied down to that chair, and raised my arms and examined them as if for the first time. Cuts, burns, all settled into my skin as scars. There was dried blood, dark and crusted, on the arms of the chair, and even some splatters of it on the cold stone walls.</p><p>I sat in the chair and closed my eyes, thinking, ignoring Zach’s hesitant protests as he studied me closely. Remembering the times I had passed out from the pain in this chair, remembering waking up to the sounds of the lock turning on the door, and the fear that would come as it opened. Some days my arms would be so bloody, strips of flesh falling off like meat, and they’d had to be bandaged up which almost hurt worse, and I wouldn’t be able to eat. One time, I'd gotten an arm out of the bindings, and hurled the knife I'd become intimately familiar in my own skin with at the nearest head I could find. That body was probably in the river, too.</p><p>I remembered it all.</p><p>Stark red hair, and green eyes that looked so familiar. A sing-song voice that said, “You’re quite pretty, you know.”</p><p>I jerked out of the chair and threw it as hard against a wall as I could. The wood splintered into pieces, some big, some small, and shattered onto the floor with a loud noise.</p><p>“Cammie!” Zach rushed towards me, grabbing my wrists and pinning them down by my side as gently as he could. I twisted my hands free and shoved him backwards, the brief flare of sudden anger slowly ebbing but still there, but he only came back again to grab me by my arms and hold me steady. The fury deep inside me was calming as he held me and forced me to look at him, murmuring that I was okay and everything’s fine, except I wasn’t okay, and nothing was fine, and each glance at his green eyes was proof.</p><p>The door opened again to reveal Agent Townsend and Abby, Aunt Abby’s face twisting in horror as she takes the room in. She stops in her tracks, but Townsend does a brief glance around the room, sees the broken chair, and walks down the stairs, revealing Bex and Macey looking frightened behind them. I closed my eyes to take a few breaths, and when I opened them, stepped away from Zach’s hold avoiding his eyes, muttering a quick, “I’m fine. Sorry.”</p><p>Townsend walked around the room, checking the same things that I did. He scraped some of the dried blood off the floor with a pen, and dropped it in a small ziploc bag I don’t know where he pulled out of. Never hurts to be too sure, I supposed.</p><p>I looked around the room again, a place so familiar to me it felt like a second skin. I knew I must have stayed there for a little over two months, waiting, hurting. They poked and prodded almost every part of my body, and every night I'd be cuffed to the bed when the woman would walk in, expensive medicines in hand, to patch up my face. Just the face. I could be bleeding out from a stab in my thigh and all I would get is a crude bandage, but my face bore no scars.</p><p>Soft, cold, gentle fingers fluttering as they carefully stitched me up to leave no scars. There were ugly, thick, raised, angry red lines mapping everywhere in my body but my face had nothing save for maybe a faint white line. She was so careful about that.</p><p>While walking towards the window, I kicked a CD player in my path, and I knelt down to examine it. There was already a disc inside, and when I turned the player on and pressed play, the music that has been haunting me since my return played.</p><p>The circus music drifted through the room, floating like dust, each note a dandelion seed carried away by a gentle drift. From me, to Zach, to Townsend, to Abby, to Bex, and then finally to Macey, who looked like she was going to be sick with recognition.</p><p>“They left it here,” I said, before humming along a few lines from the song, carved into my head with a knife. I knew the CD was looped, never-ending. “They knew I’d find here again. They left it for me.”</p><p>Abby had broken out of whatever emotion that had left her feet stuck on those stairs and approached me carefully, as if I was some wild animal that needed soothing. She brought me in close, and I didn’t decline her—instead, breathing her in and letting go, or trying to, anyway. “We gotta leave soon, Cam,” she said, and then firmly kissed me on the top of my head. “They could have this house on surveillance.”</p><p>I shook my head no, even though logically I knew they might. But something deep inside told me that there was nothing left for them there. No ghosts for the Circle. Just for me.</p><p>I pulled away from her, following the walls as my fingers traced the stones nearby the small bed. “We won’t find anything here,” Zach was saying. “They never use a safe house twice.”</p><p>And then my fingers found the letters scratched into the mortar between the stones.</p><p>
  <em> C.A.M. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Cameron Ann Morgan. </em>
</p><p>My hand began to shake as it pushed the mattress aside, revealing three more letters hidden below. Each chipped away night after night, a half decade apart, both leaving bloody and bruised fingers and the small sense of relief, of conclusion.</p><p>
  <em> M.A.M. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Matthew Andrew Morgan </em>
</p><p>“Yes,” I told Zach, my voice flat and cold and even. “They do.”</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>Zach couldn’t hold me in the room. My roommates couldn’t stop me on the stairs. Nobody could stand in my way as I ran, Aunt Abby on my tail, the others following. I wasn’t running from that place or its ghosts. I was running to something, for something, as I burst through the door and out into the snow.</p><p>The woods were alive with flashes and beats, images that came from black and white, like I’d seen it all before in a dream. But not a dream, I realized. A nightmare.</p><p><em> Bring the girl, </em> a voice said.</p><p>
  <em> Show her what happens to spies who don’t talk. </em>
</p><p>My mind didn’t know where I was going, but my legs did. They took me over banks and around pine trees. My body was impervious to the cold and the boy at my back with the same eyes as that woman yelling my name.</p><p>Zach was struggling to keep pace behind me, but all I heard was the music, and the cold voice saying, <em> The least we can do is take her to her father. </em></p><p>I skidded to a stop at the edge of the trees, exhaling foggy, ragged breaths, staring into the small clearing. But it wasn’t a clearing—I knew it. The outline of the trees was too precise, the corners too square to be random.</p><p>Snow covered the ground, and yet I knew that patch of earth. I’d felt it calling to me for weeks, pulling me back to that mountain. I remember being dragged, bleeding and bruised but not yet broken, words spat at my feet as I gave wordless cries and shrieks of pain.</p><p>“It’s real,” I said.</p><p>Abby was behind me, panting from the altitude. Zach tried to put his arms around me. He didn’t know my shaking had nothing to do with the cold.</p><p>When I began to say, “No. No. No,” he didn’t know I was revolting against, not a memory, but a fact.</p><p>“What is this?” Townsend was there finally, Bex at his side.</p><p>But it was Macey who stood apart from the others, seeing the small clearing at a distance. And that’s why she was the first to realize, “It’s a grave.”</p><p>“No. No.” I fell to my knees and began to scrape blindly through the white.</p><p>“Cammie.” Townsend’s hands were on mine, but Abby was already on her knees beside me, scraping too.</p><p>“Cammie!” Zach yelled, and pulled me to my feet and into his arms. “Stop.”</p><p>“He’s there,” I said, the word blending into sobs. “He’s there. He’s there.”</p><p>Abby didn’t scream, but she kept clawing, her bare hands bleeding in the snow. There was no marker for him, nothing to say that the bones buried there belonged to my father. That those bones loved caramel fudge ice cream and hated rainbow sprinkles, but got them anyway. Those bones did the newspaper crosswords every day, a little girl sitting on the kitchen table in the morning, swinging her legs and giggling as she timed him furiously trying to beat his record of a minute and twenty-six seconds. Those bones dragged his daughter into dances all over the house, twirling and catching, little feet standing on big, steady ones. That his name was Matthew Morgan, and I loved him more than anything in the world.</p><p>“It’s over.” Agent Townsend reached for her. He didn’t scold or scoff. He just smoothed her hair, held her arms, and said, “He’s gone.”</p><p><em>“This is what happens to spies that don’t talk,"</em> I muttered lowly, the words spilling out like tears, and Zach drew me in closer, unknowing of these memories being dredged from deep inside of me. <em>“This is what happens when you try to play hero. All the heroes are dead."</em></p><p>Zach was shivering too, but I couldn’t feel it. The words hung around in the air, as if the steam that escaped my mouth were really those looming threats, hanging heavy, weighted, all around us. <em>“All the heroes are dead,”</em> I whispered, my head pounding. <em>“Don’t be a hero, Cam.”</em></p><p>I stumbled away from Zach, my feet moving against my own will as they stepped away from my father’s grave and towards another clearing gone either unnoticed or forgotten in the commotion. But I felt it there, the beginnings of a hole being dug out in the dirt, now covered in a thick layer of snow.</p><p>At the base of which, there lay a wooden plank, soft and rotted. Brushing the snow off, the words carved in by a knife could be seen clearly, and as Zach crept up behind me, I knew his breath caught as he read the words.</p><p><em> C. Morgan,</em> it read.</p><p>
  <em>The least we could do is take her to her father</em>
</p><p>The grave is half-dug.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm going there to see my Father,<br/>I'm going there, no more to roam<br/>I'm just a-going over Jordan<br/>I'm just a-going over home</p><p>—Wayfaring Stranger</p></blockquote></div></div>
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